I'm in but I'm not in • 2024

I'M IN BUT I'M NOT IN • 2024

I’M IN BUT I’M NOT IN 2024. Pamela Leung and Ankit Mishra.Moving Image | Single-channel video

I’M IN BUT I’M NOT IN is a performative film that draws on the sensory and rhythmic environment of a neighbourhood coffee shop to explore the psychological condition of the outsider.

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Developed for Coffee & SerendipiTea, a duo exhibition commissioned and curated by Bankstown Arts Centre, 2024.

Artist/Performer: Pamela Leung.
Filmmaker & Collaborator: Ankit Mishra.

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Promo: Coffee & SerendipiTea—Bankstown Arts Centre 2024 | Duration 0:28

Through a solo performance, I move through the social space—embodying three different customers, a waitstaff and a barista.

These fluid shifts become a visual language for the immigrant experience: a continual recalibration of identity in response to surrounding expectations, while an internal sense of displacement persists.

The title phrase, “I’m in but I’m not in,” reflects this tension—being physically present within a space, yet not fully situated within it. Repetition, gesture and role-playing become a quiet negotiation of belonging; where identity remains multiple, provisional and unresolved.

Set within the familiar texture of everyday interaction, the work holds a subtle dissonance—not announced, but felt.

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COFFEE & SERENDIPITEA—BANKSTOWN ARTS CENTRE • 2024

Exhibition: Coffee & SerendipiTea—Bankstown Arts Centre 2024
Image courtesy of Bankstown Arts Centre

COFFEE & SERENDIPITEA • 2024

Duo exhibition | Bankstown Arts Centre

Curated by Bankstown Arts Centre | In collaboration with Yumi Umiumare

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Coffee & SerendipiTea transforms Bankstown Arts Centre into a hybrid coffee shop and teahouse, a functional social space complete with five tables, twenty seats and an espresso machine. A conceptual extension of Not Another Bloody Coffee Shop (2015), the exhibition explores relational aesthetics and the quiet rituals embedded in café culture. Visitors became participants—served coffee by a barista, cakes by me—and in doing so, became the work itself.

Audiences were invited to respond to the prompt: “What is your olfactory memory of a café?” Their drawings and reflections were clipped directly to the gallery wall. The exhibition also marked the first public showing of my photography, with three large-scale prints displayed in the Arts Centre windows.

The exhibition brought together three works: Yuenyeung 43, a mixed-media installation drawing on Hong Kong’s everyday rituals; I’m In But I’m Not In, a large-scale moving image work in collaboration with Ankit Mishra; and Coffee or Tea?, a neon work anchoring the exhibition’s central inquiry.

Public programming included an artist talk, a closing performance with butoh artist Yumi Umiumare, and “French Toast is not from France” — a hands-on demonstration of Hong Kong-style French toast exploring culinary tradition and cultural identity.

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Artist: Pamela Leung
Filmmaker/Collaborator: Ankit Mishra

Collaborating Artist: Yumi Umiumare

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